"Dreams and Sketches"

Mary's eyes flew open. She took a deep breath and looked around. Her husband Steve slept beside her, his bare chest rising and falling. It was still the middle of the night. Moonlight, spilling through the window, danced in and out of clouds, painting the carpeted floor with undulating patterns of shadow and silver-white incandescence.

Mary briefly closed her eyes, struggling to capture the dream that had awakened her. It was a familiar one where she'd been carried down a city street in the arms of an enormous monster with aqua and purple fur. He had sharp teeth but an oddly friendly face. Intense warmth filled her whenever she looked at him. He was often accompanied by another creature that was short and green and as round as a ball. This one had a large, single eye in the center of his face.

In the next segment, she was clinging to a door, which was white with pink flower decals. That had once been her closet door, the one she remembered from her early childhood. In this dream, it was whizzing along a rail at a dizzying speed, along with countless other doors, through some impossibly vast warehouse. She had been both scared and exhilarated.

Those were merely dreams, weren't they? She didn't have them every night but she had experienced them frequently enough throughout her life that she figured they must be significant in some way. Did they symbolize anything? Was this something to be concerned about? Her waking life was busy but happy.

Mary's fingers ached to sketch this latest dream. She sighed and slid out of bed, careful not to awaken Steve. According to the glowing red numbers on their digital clock, it was a little after two in the morning.

I should go back to sleep, Mary thought, searching for her slippers and robe in the faint, wavering moonlight. It was late spring but a slight chill still clung to the air at night. It's my turn to drop Katie off at daycare in the morning, before work, then there's that meeting later in afternoon. She felt tired just thinking of this but knew that the images from that dream wouldn't let her rest until she had copied them onto paper. She snatched her sketchpad off her nightstand before she crept from the room.

Mary clicked on a lamp in the living room and settled into her favorite chair. It was worn but comfortable, the place she chose to do her sketches. She was a talented artist, who had been drawing since she was a small child, but had never chosen to do it professionally. Her practical-minded parents encouraged her talent but still convinced her to take the more traditional route: go to college, find a career, get married, and raise a family. She was satisfied with that choice but made it a point to draw at least a little every day.

She grabbed a pencil, opened to a blank page, and began to sketch the doors. There had been so many of them in the dream that she knew it would be impossible to draw all of them.

When her hand grew tired, she turned to some of her earlier sketches. Sure enough, there was that hairy, friendly monster with the sharp teeth, and the one that resembled a ball with skinny legs. The names she had given them were "Kitty" and "Mike," although Mike had always referred to his big friend as "Sulley." And they had called her by another name, hadn't they? "Boo," wasn't it? She felt a smile creep across her face at that recollection. There had been many other monsters, including a lizard-like creature that could blend into backgrounds like a chameleon and even turn invisible. She had been afraid of him a long time ago and even recalled a distant nightmare where he had strapped her to some machine that made her scream. But, for some reason, her fear of him had suddenly vanished. Had she scared him off? That thought filled her with a strange exhilaration.

These dreams were too vivid to simply be dreams. But they couldn't be memories, could they? Mary closed her eyes and thought back to her early childhood. Didn't she have two imaginary friends named Sulley and Mike? She remembered her parents telling her about that when she was older. But was there more to this? Didn't Sulley and Mike travel to different closets all over the world to scare kids? Were those doors she had seen in her dreams all different closets? Did she somehow find a way to sneak into this "monster world?"

Mary shook her head and placed her sketchpad on the coffee table. That was ridiculous. Of course she'd dreamed all that up. Perhaps she ought to write a children's book about that someday and illustrate it. She certainly had enough material!

She stood and stretched. She'd already wasted valuable sleep time with these recollections. If she didn't return to bed now, she might fall asleep at work, in the middle of her meeting—

Mary was startled by sudden shrieks of laughter coming from Katie's bedroom. Concern flooded her. What was her daughter doing up at this time? And what could she be laughing at?

Mary rushed down the short hallway, into Katie's room. The toddler was sitting up in bed, pointing at her open closet door.

Mary flipped on the light. The little girl giggled and her dark eyes sparkled. "Funny monster, Mommy," she laughed. Her thick mass of coppery curls bounced around her head.

Mary sat on the edge of the bed and drew Katie close. "It's just a dream, honey," she said, kissing the child's soft, warm cheek. "Go back to sleep."

Mary's gaze strayed to the closet. Behind the rack of Katie's hanging clothes, she thought she could see two faces peering out. One was covered with aqua and purple fur, the other was round and green with a single eye.

Sulley? Mike? She blinked and they were gone.

Mary felt the warm weight of Katie's small body as she drifted back to sleep. She tucked her back beneath the blankets and kissed her again.

Had those monsters been real after all?

End